Transcript of Remarks delivered by Senator Kerry
in the Senate on July 12, 2007

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

AMENDMENT NO. 2019

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I rise today to speak to the Levin-Reed-Kerry et. al amendment with respect to Iraq. Today the President made a partial report on Iraq. And while it is true there has been some tactical military success, no amount of spinning, no amount of focus on the military component can obscure the bottom line reality in Iraq today.

That reality is clear. There has been no meaningful political progress. In the long run, that is the only progress that matters, that makes a difference to our policy because it is the politics that is producing the killing and the chaos in Iraq.

Unless and until Iraqis resolve their fundamental political differences, any security gains will be temporary at best, particularly given the numbers of troops that are committed to that security, and given the difficulties that we already understand in terms of deployment schedules.

That is a fundamental underlying reality that colleagues in the Senate need to focus on. Any tactical gain in the short term, whether it is in Anbar Province, Diyala, or elsewhere, is welcome now, but the fact is, it is fundamentally temporary absent the political resolution that is critical to ultimately ending the violence.

So moving the goalposts, dressing up the failure to meet strict benchmarks as progress, those are, frankly, rationalizations for failure over the long term. They are not plans for success. It is hard when you measure the absence of political progress over the course of the last months against these temporary tactical gains. It is very difficult to suggest that we are doing anything except sort of committing American forces, troops, to a kind of holding action for hope, hope that there is some turn and some kind of outcome.

I think most of us would rather have the U.S. military committed to what we all consider to be a winning strategy, not a hopeful strategy. Meanwhile, in the middle of the President's report, partial report today, another, frankly, more chilling and important report tells us that while we have been bogged down and distracted in Iraq, al-Qaida, which the President keeps referring to as the central enemy, al-Qaida has found a safe heaven in Pakistan. Al-Qaida has rebuilt its organization.

Today, top intelligence officials tell the United States that al-Qaida is better positioned to strike the West than they have been at any time since 9/11. I think any American hearing this, after these several thousand lives have been sacrificed in Iraq, to hear that al-Qaida, which is the principal focus of the war on terrorism, is stronger today after all of these billions of dollars and lives lost in Iraq, is a stunning turn of events, shocking turn of events, one that ought to stop everyone in the Senate to collectively turn our policy to where it ought to be, which is the focus on al-Qaida and not the focus in Iraq.

In fact, what has happened in Anbar Province proves that al-Qaida can become more of a minimalist kind of threat in Iraq itself when measured against the threat of the political killing that is taking place between Sunni and Shia, Shia and Sunni.

Our principal focus, notwithstanding this report from our own intelligence agencies, is where? It is on Iraq. Not principally where it ought to be, in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. Iraq is not just a distraction from the fight against terrorists, it is, frankly, al-Qaida's best fundraising tool. It is al-Qaida's best organizational magnet. You did not have to wait until September in order to understand what is happening today and what will continue to happen in the absence of any measure of political progress.

So what we need is not a step away by the Senate, not some sort of delaying tactic to wait for the magic of hope to produce itself in September, what we need is the hard work of the Senate to produce a policy for change now. Two days ago I heard some of my colleagues come to the floor and question why we are having this debate now when the White House is going to report on the escalation in September?

I heard the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions, say: This is not the time to alter the policy we established about 2 months ago.

I heard Senator Kyl from Arizona say: We need to wait for the report in September before making judgments about what to do next.

I heard the senior Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, ask--and these are his words: Why do we have to keep taking up the Iraq issue when we know full well in September there will be a major debate on this issue?

Well, I have respect for all of the opinions of all colleagues in the Senate. I particularly have respect and know how much my friend, my colleague from Arizona, cares about American troops and understands the price of war.

But I think that is the wrong question. Those are the wrong questions.

The American people understand why we ought to debate this issue now. The answer is very simple, and it is very compelling. It is because American soldiers are dying now, and because the escalation, the purpose of the escalation--which was to provide cover for the Iraqi politicians to make compromises--can be judged a failure now.

When a policy is not working, you do not wait for an artificial timeline to fix it; you fix it now. The very same voices who have come to the floor for years condemning artificial deadlines now want to wait for more Americans to die and more Iraqis to kill each other, until the artificial deadline of September, regardless of what the facts tell us today.

I believe they want to do it so President Bush can deliver his report, even though we know today what the heart of that report will be. In fact, the President delivered a partial report today. I think most people understand, because it is obvious, that the facts are beginning to accelerate the need to be able to have a more rapid response.

The report in September, I guarantee my colleagues, will reflect exactly what we see today. Violence will be up in some places, and it will be down in others. There will be some tactical successes. Our military will deserve the credit for those, and our soldiers will have earned those tactical successes the hard way. But no matter what sacrifices they have made, and they will have made extraordinary sacrifices, the fact remains that absent the political differences, which already we are hearing they will not make, and they are not prepared to engage in, absent that, the civil war will be raging on and squabbling Iraqi politicians and sectarian forces will refuse to compromise. And, most importantly, despite the so-called breathing room that I heard the senior Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, ask--and these are his words: Why do we have to keep taking up the Iraq issue when we know full well in September there will be a major debate on this issue?

Well, I have respect for all of the opinions of all colleagues in the Senate. I particularly have respect and know how much my friend, my colleague from Arizona, cares about American troops and understands the price of war.

But I think that is the wrong question. Those are the wrong questions.

The American people understand why we ought to debate this issue now. The answer is very simple, and it is very compelling. It is because American soldiers are dying now, and because the escalation, the purpose of the escalation--which was to provide cover for the Iraqi politicians to make compromises--can be judged a failure now.

When a policy is not working, you do not wait for an artificial timeline to fix it; you fix it now. The very same voices who have come to the floor for years condemning artificial deadlines now want to wait for more Americans to die and more Iraqis to kill each other, until the artificial deadline of September, regardless of what the facts tell us today.

I believe they want to do it so President Bush can deliver his report, even though we know today what the heart of that report will be. In fact, the President delivered a partial report today. I think most people understand, because it is obvious, that the facts are beginning to accelerate the need to be able to have a more rapid response.

The report in September, I guarantee my colleagues, will reflect exactly what we see today. Violence will be up in some places, and it will be down in others. There will be some tactical successes. Our military will deserve the credit for those, and our soldiers will have earned those tactical successes the hard way. But no matter what sacrifices they have made, and they will have made extraordinary sacrifices, the fact remains that absent the political differences, which already we are hearing they will not make, and they are not prepared to engage in, absent that, the civil war will be raging on and squabbling Iraqi politicians and sectarian forces will refuse to compromise. And, most importantly, despite the so-called breathing room that the escalation was supposed to provide, there will be no real political progress.

What is happening now is as disturbing as anything I have seen in the 23 years that I have been in the Senate. I came here in 1985 during the height of the Cold War. President Reagan was at that time leading us in an effort to try to confront the continued nuclear confrontation under which we had lived since the end of World War II. I think all of us remember well what a critical moment of confrontation that was.

But I came here principally on this issue of war and peace. It was also a time when we were deeply caught up in an illegal war in Central America, and the issue of the contras came to dominate the debate in Washington for a period of time. I mention that because the issues of the lessons of war and how America goes to war and what we do has been something that has been at the center of my involvement in public life.

I must say, what I see today happening, I regret, reminds me of what I thought was a lesson that we had learned in the course of the Vietnam war, and something that we had always resolved to avoid.

Many of us remember how then-President Nixon continued our involvement because he didn't want history to judge him as having lost a war, notwithstanding that he didn't begin it, he inherited it. So we continued our intervention in a civil war for pride and to save face, not because we had a winning strategy. Presidents and politicians may have the luxury of worrying about losing face or worrying about their legacy, but the Senate has the responsibility to worry about young Americans and innocent civilians who are losing their lives now for a policy that is failing now.

In recent weeks, some have reminded me of a question I asked when I returned from service in Vietnam almost 40 years ago, when I spoke from my heart about what I thought was wrong with that war. Back in 1971, I was privileged to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and raised the question: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? I never thought I would be reliving that question again. I never thought I would have parents of young Americans killed in Iraq look me in the eye and tell me: Senator, my son died in vain.

On a personal level, I happen to disagree with that statement. I think each of my colleagues probably does also. I believe that any American--I heard the Senator from Idaho talking about this--no matter the bad decisions made in Washington, no matter the faults of the policy, any American who gives up life or limb for love of country has never done so in vain. Because service to country under any circumstances is the highest calling there is. I would like to be able to tell those parents that their sons and daughters died for a policy that was equal to their service and equal to their sacrifice. I thought we had learned something from Vietnam. I thought we had learned something from a war that went on and on, a war that was escalated long after Presidents and policymakers knew that no number of American troops could end the civil war between the Vietnamese. Here we are back in the same place today, where no number of American troops in Iraq can end a civil war between Iraqis.

I think most of our colleagues understand this war in Iraq was a disastrous mistake and the policy being pursued today which doesn't resolve the fundamental differences that are propelling Iraqis to kill Iraqis is itself a mistake. So we are seeing a war prolonged and prosecuted not for a winning strategy. No general has come to us, no administration official has come to us in 407, where we meet for our secret briefings, or in any committee and said: This is a winning strategy. What we have is a hope, a wing, and a prayer that somehow these Iraqis are going to come together and make some decisions.

But we don't even have the kind of leverage diplomacy that war deserves to maximize the ability of those people to come together. We are seeing a war prolonged to prosecute it not for a winning strategy but for a refusal to accept reality.

What is that reality? We have heard it from General Casey, General Abizaid, General Petraeus, from the Secretary of State, from the President, and the Vice President--there is no military solution.

Each Member has to ask themselves in these next days, what is our responsibility to our soldiers and to our country--not to our political party, not to an ideology. What is our responsibility to the soldiers and to country? I think it is pretty straightforward. It is to get the policy right, not in September but now.

The only question on this Senate floor now is whether we are going to have the courage to change the policy and get it right. The only question is whether we are going to stop this administration from adding to the thousands of mistakes compounded one upon the other or whether we are going to say: Well, we would like to do it. We kind of have the responsibility to. We hear people in cloakrooms privately saying: I think it is wrong. Boy, it is screwed up. But it doesn't translate into votes. It is that simple. If you think the policy is broken now, then we ought to fix it now, because lives are at stake, as are the interests of our country. Our security is at stake, and the war on terror is at stake.

If anybody needs a reminder of the urgency, I say to them respectfully: You don't have to wait until September to get a reminder. All you have to do is go out to Arlington Cemetery almost any day of the week. You can see the many military funerals but particularly those of servicemembers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can see the precise military honor given to each of those soldiers, the flags draping the coffin rippling in the breeze. You can see the honor guard folding that flag meticulously into that sharp triangle of blue and white stars and then handing it to the loved ones, the wife, the mother, husband, father. Then hear those words: On behalf of a grateful nation, and watch people crumble.

We are losing about 100 soldiers a month. I ask my colleagues: How many more times is that scene going to be repeated between now and September? How many more times is that scene going to be repeated before this institution does what it is supposed to do? How are you going to feel in September if you finally wind up saying: Well, I think the policy is broken now? And what will happen with respect to the parents of those soldiers and their families, those who gave their lives so we could wait for a report to tell us the obvious, what we know today?

Over a year ago, Senator Feingold and I came to the Senate floor and we asked our colleagues to confront this very reality, to recognize the fact that our own generals knew even then there was no American military solution to an Iraqi civil war, to acknowledge that the political progress necessary for the Iraqis to end their civil war would come only if America compelled them to act by imposing meaningful deadlines and leveraging those deadlines with legitimate diplomatic effort. That was 1 year ago. We got 13 votes. People said at the time: Well, we are not ready. I am not there yet. One thousand Americans have died since then. I ask those folks: What about now? Are you ready now or will it take another thousand?

It is not the numbers per se, because America has lost many more people in other wars. What it is is the numbers measured against the strategy and the progress. That is where our responsibility lies. By any measurement, we have a requirement to respond now. Those 13 votes have now grown to more than 50 votes today, but still the policy is the same.

Today Senator Levin and Senator Reed, myself and others are asking the Members of the Senate to look hard at what we are proposing. Don't fall prey to the quick hit, easy stereotype, political denunciation of what is happening here. This is a legitimate policy proposal which, if it were joined in in a bipartisan way, would send a critical message to Iraqis and to folks in the region about the dynamic that has to change in order to truly meet all of our strategic interests in that region.

I have heard some people use descriptions that it is a recipe for failure. Well, measured against what, No. 1? No. 2, it is the only way, according to most of the experts outside the Senate, to actually leverage a shift in behavior by the Iraqis who today believe they can continue to play the American presence off for their own political purposes. The fact is, it is only by shifting to a different deployment, which is what we do. There is no precipitous, complete withdrawal from Iraq, to the chagrin of some people who think there absolutely should be. There is a responsible, calculated, carefully timed process by which, together with our own deployment schedules, we have laid out an ability for the President to continue to finish the training, to chase al-Qaida and prosecute the war on terror, and to protect American forces.

According to the Iraq Study Group, according to all of the outside analyses that have looked at this issue, the fact is, those are the only legitimate things we ought to be called on to do a year from now. Nobody is talking about next month or 2 months from now that suddenly Iraq would be abandoned. The fact is, we have come to a moment where the private hand wringing we see in the elevators and in private conversations has run its course. It is time to speak one's conscience publicly through votes, not privately.

It is legitimate to suggest that to wait until September for a report, where most of the intelligence community and most of the observers we have talked to who have followed this issue closely and report to us appropriately tell us themselves that there is precious little, if any, advance with respect to the political compromise, makes it exceedingly difficult to be able to suggest that. I think we have lost 523 Americans who have died since the escalation started. In the next 2 months at the rate of 100 a month, you are looking at over 200 that we know will die for a policy that remains a mistake over those next 2 months.

Let me lay out for a moment where we are with respect to this political solution, because it makes the picture even more stark. It has been over 1 year now since the Maliki government took power. What have we asked of them? What have they agreed to? What have they accomplished?

Virtually nothing accomplished politically. But it is not the first time the Iraqis have not met any of the requests made of them and items agreed to. The fact is that 9 months ago was the deadline for Iraqis to approve a new oil law and a provincial election law. Neither one has been approved. Eight months ago was the deadline for a new de-Baathfication law to help bring the Sunnis into the government. Guess what. It hasn't been approved, and nothing happened as a consequence of its not being approved. Seven months ago was the deadline for Iraqis to approve legislation to disarm the militias. Absolutely no progress has been made on this crucial legislation and the militias continue to wreak havoc. Six months ago was the deadline for Iraqis to complete a constitutional review process. The constitutional committee hasn't even drafted proposed amendments, and the Iraqis remain far apart on basic issues such as federalism and the fate of the divided city of Kirkuk.

So we find ourselves today no closer to a political solution than we were when the Maliki government took power over 1 year ago, but over 1,100 American troops have given their lives since that time. We are no closer than we were in January when the President decided to disregard key elements of the Iraq Study Group and announced the escalation, but over 600 additional American troops have died since then. Without real deadlines to pressure the Iraqis to a new reality, we will not be able to leverage their behavior. If you can't do it that way, having seen that we can't do it this other way, it may be that you can't do it, in which case American troops should not be caught in the middle of what they are determined to pursue.

One-third of the Cabinet in Iraq, including the major Sunni party, is currently boycotting the Government. Iraq's Parliament, which cannot even muster a quorum more than once every week or two, is reportedly still going to go on vacation for the entire month of August without having met their schedule.

It is pretty hard to discern how you turn to the parent of a troop who is maimed or killed in the course of the month of August while the Iraqi politicians are vacationing without even meeting one of the political requirements that has been set out. So I think there is a guarantee they are not going to meet the political progress before September, absent some change that is not currently on the horizon.

The front page of Sunday's Washington Post tells us pretty much all we need to know:

[T]he Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy.

So time is not on our side, and it has not been on our side for a long time, and no escalation is going to change that.

The President keeps telling us, and tells Americans, that we must not abandon the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq and leave them with a safe haven. Well, how many times do we have to say it? We all agree with that. That is not even on the table. No one is talking about abandoning Iraq to al-Qaida. No one is talking about not continuing to prosecute the war against al-Qaida.

In fact, in the Levin-Reid-Kerry amendment there is a specific statement with respect to a specific provision with respect to the President's need to continue to prosecute al-Qaida in Iraq. We all agree with that. That is not the issue. What it is is a phony argument, and I think our troops and the country deserve better than a phony argument. We deserve more than a Presidential straw man in a debate while real men and women are fighting and putting their lives on the line for us.

Our bill keeps in place the troops necessary to prosecute al-Qaida. Our bill keeps in place the troops necessary to complete the training of Iraqis to stand up for themselves. Our bill keeps in place the troops necessary to protect American facilities and forces. And 1 year from now that is all our mission ought to be.

We have troops in many other parts of the region--Kuwait, Bahrain, in the Gulf, and many other places--and we have the ability to do what we need to do to represent our interests with respect to Iran and with respect to the region. But we must redefine our mission and focus on our vital national interests, and chief among those is fighting al-Qaida smartly.

I believe it is fundamentally wrong to sacrifice over 100 American troops per month as we stretch our military past the breaking point for a policy that we know does not address the fundamental issues and resolve those issues. The troops deserve to know they are being asked to sacrifice for real progress. It is wrong to keep spending over $10 billion each month--$456 billion in total--for this war of choice. We cannot continue telling Americans that refereeing an Iraqi civil war is worth more in our blood and treasure than it would have been to provide Head Start for a year to 60 million of our children or to provide nearly 4 years of health care to every child in America or to provide a tenfold increase in foreign aid to express the real face and values of America all over the world.

In fact, all of the money that has been spent in Iraq could have funded a Middle East development plan nearly four times as large as the Marshall Plan, a plan that would have helped reduce radicalism rather than enflame it.

We also cannot continue to squander our moral authority and offer al-Qaida a greater recruiting tool than they could ever have hoped to create for themselves.

So my hope is we would work to find a genuine bipartisan majority in the Senate, a majority of conscience, a pragmatic and patriotic majority committed to work across party lines to right a failed policy in Iraq and leave in place a sustainable strategy.

Now, let me say a word about that to my colleagues.

We keep hearing the words ``precipitous'' and ``failure.'' None of us want failure. We want success. What we are hearing today is--we may have differing views about how you get it; it is not often talked about, but it is clear, and I think it should be talked about--that if we are unsuccessful in seeking the kind of political compromise necessary, there will be a lot of killing that will continue, and there will be people who have put themselves on the line to fight for their own future and for democracy whom we will have obligations to. We need to live up to them.

That is another lesson of Vietnam.

We need desperately to work together in the best traditions of the Senate and the country to find what I think is real common ground--that we have interests in the region, interests in Iraq, interests with respect to the Middle East peace process, that we will have long-term interests and obligations no matter who is President of the United States or how we approach this and that we need to shift course in order to get to that place.

Now, some have insisted on seeing this entire issue exclusively through the prism of victory or defeat over an enemy in battle. But that simply is not the reality of what we see in Iraq today in a civil war. Iraq is a chaotic society, a failed state. The real question is: How do you work together to craft a strategy that is sustainable militarily, politically, financially, and diplomatically? There are areas of broad bipartisan agreement for those who are willing to do that work of building consensus.

First of all, I think there is agreement there will be some residual presence among at least the majority of the people on our side of the aisle. In addition, all of us are concerned that our redeployment from Iraq must not happen in a manner that draws us back into a greater conflict at a later date. We ought to be working together to lay the groundwork not just for the next few months but for the next years down the road throughout the region.

There is broad agreement that we must refocus our mission on what ought to be our core objective: fighting terrorists. Indeed, in the alternative, we are creating more terrorists daily as a result of our policy than if we were to shift it.

So refocusing the mission means American troops should be hunting and killing al-Qaida and not being killed on patrol through the streets of Baghdad in the middle of a civil strife where they become a target of opportunity for any person who wants to create a headline.

It means training Iraqis to patrol Iraqi streets and refocusing our mission on preventing this war from spreading into a regional conflict.

And finally--and this is perhaps most important of all because you cannot get to any of the other things if you do not do this; and we have not done it--we need to embark on a major diplomatic outreach to restore America's influence and credibility in the Middle East. I will offer an amendment asking the Senate to go on record supporting a standing conference for the region, including the Permanent Five of the United Nations and all the regional partners and neighbors and parties, in order to reclaim the diplomatic initiative in Iraq and throughout the region.

This debate also ought to be part of a larger framework. In Lebanon, the Siniora Government is hanging on by a thread as it confronts Sunni extremists sympathetic to al-Qaida in the north and Shia extremists led by an empowered Hezbollah in the south. Iran and Syria have stepped into the vacuum, leading reconstruction efforts after the last war and creating a greater connection to the people in the street as a result. Now they are rearming Hezbollah for the next war. The Palestinians have fought a brief civil war that left an emboldened Hamas in control of Gaza, and again Iran and Syria stand poised to take advantage of that.

Never has there been a more important moment to try to move together collectively, diplomatically in that effort. None of these events, frankly, should have taken us by surprise because King Abdullah of Jordan loudly warned of three civil wars last year. Yet time and again we seem to be taken by surprise when events on the ground spin out of control, and then we are left scrambling to patch together an ad hoc response from half a world away. That simply cannot continue. It is not in our interest. It certainly is not in the interest of the region.

So we need a reliable multilateral regional forum for preventing these situations from becoming crises--and for responding when they do. That is why we have to lead the effort to convene Iraq's leaders and key regional players in the effort to do that.

In the end, we need to reach for the best traditions of the Senate and look back to the bipartisan accomplishments of men such as Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and worked closely with Democratic President Harry Truman, and together they helped to create--were the principal leaders in creating--a new world order and a winning strategy in the Cold War. They cooperated on a series of institutions and treaties--NATO, the IMF, the U.N. Charter, the Marshall Plan--and all of those outlived both of them.

When Arthur Vandenberg passed away in 1951, the Chaplain at his funeral said:

We thank Thee that in the gathering storm of aggression which now rages, Thy servant Arthur H. Vandenberg, in a time that called for greatness, grew into greatness.

This is a long time since the time of Arthur Vandenberg and Harry Truman, but for the Senate to live up to its own obligations and possibilities, I believe we ought to go back to the politics that stops at the water's edge when it comes to foreign policy. I think we ought to grab that opportunity here and now to change our policy in Iraq. Why? Not for partisan advantage but to strengthen our country in the pursuit of our interests in the region and to truly support our troops and provide the kind of direction that will strengthen America and strengthen us in the war on terror.